I work at a large cable company and this is how many of us export for air and for our clients. However, I think you hit upon a challenge facing all editors today. There doesn't seem to be a single compression setting that anyone is using! And it's tough to know which is best. We all wish there were industry guidelines.
Here's what I do. I export my AVID timeline using the Quicktime movie setting/animation setting. Keep your frame rate Current.
Keep the size 1920 x 1080...and export this to your desktop. Of course this will be a LARGE file.
Then, make sure you have Quicktime Pro. When you open the movie on your desktop, go under File..export again...and THIS TIME...choose h264. When the box opens...you can choose not to restrict the frame rate. OR you can choose a different one. 10000 to 15000 is still a good rate...and your file will significantly shrink in size with pretty good quality. I usually will take that h264 into Sorensen Squeeze and use a WMV preset of 480 or 360 (16 x 9) for smaller versions that will play for clients. I make almost everything like this and these h264's go on-air as is.
Now, AVID will export h264s and wmvs directly as well. I find they seem a bit fuzzy to me. That's why I use this other method.
I hope this helps!

If you'll all PC, this won't help, but it's a great little app. I also usually make Animation QT's, then drop them on this and watch as it spits out a much smaller (bit-wise) QT with very good quality. I also have good luck using MPEG Streamclip.